20 Comments

Gezza

Joe Bloggs

Looks like a major face plant for nunes and his fakey fake memo on the Carter Page FISA Warrant:

Nunes released a memo claiming that the FBI misled the FISA Court about Christopher Steele, the former British secret agent who compiled the “dossier” on Trump-Russia ties and who was a source of information in the FISA applications on Page. The main complaint in the Nunes memo was that FBI whitewashed Steele—that the FISA applications did not “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.”

…

Now we have some additional information in the form of the redacted FISA applications themselves, and the Nunes memo looks even worse. In my earlier post, I observed that the FBI’s disclosures about Steele were contained in a footnote, but argued that this did not detract from their sufficiency… Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.

There’s also more detail on the previous disclosure from the House intelligence committee Democrats’ memo on how Steele went to the press with the “dossier” when FBI Director James Comey sent his October 2016 letter to Congress disclosing the possible newfound importance of the Weiner laptop in the Clinton investigation. According to the FISA applications, Steele complained that Comey’s action could influence the election. But when Steele went to the press, it caused FBI to close him out as an informant—facts which are disclosed and cross-referenced in the footnote in bold text.

Joe Bloggs

No amount of hinky refutation from the Washington Examiner can change the facts in the Page FISA. As for the nunes memo, it was quite rightly identified as pure spindoctory within a NY minute of its release.

Alan Wilkinson

Joe Bloggs

The “detail” in your link is pure horseshit. The Washington Examiner was crowing about the nunes memo and its contents an hour before nunes released it. They were leaked the document by nunes and/or trump and have a highly vested interest in defending it.

However their analysis lacks all credibility. Every single one of the assertions about inadequacies about the FISA application by nunes are just directly refuted by the FISA application.

You and the rest of the troll infestation across the internet continues its work, insisting the FBI didn’t make adequate disclosures to the FISC about Steele’s intelligence.

Rather than relying on the flakey fakey Washington Examiner defence of its own (and nunes’) idiocy, try reading the FISA applications yourself. See for yourself.

Joe Bloggs

Well if ZeroHedge’s deeply dodgy news can be trusted this time, I say well done Omaba. Without his efforts and without the Mueller probe, all of trumps teams dodgy dealings with Russia would have been swept under the carpet for frothy righties to ignore.

As for Susan Rice’s stand-down order, she was concerned that an Obama‑Putin face‑off would help the Russians achieve their objectives, by creating chaos, helping trump, and hurting Clinton… it was a tough call either way. No matter what Obama and Rice said or did, the frothy righties could spin it into another conspiracy…

Getting back to reality, the Page FISA docs show that the FBI properly disclosed its sources of information and that it relied on more than just the controversial Steele dossier, fundamentally contradicting the claims of abuse made by nunes (and the frothy righties on this site).

MaureenW

That’s funny Joe and someone is obviously lying, because sources I read that have been reliable to date, say the opposite.
“Now that the FISA application has been been released we know the following:
-The Russian collusion fairytale is a complete hoax
-Hillary’s team paid for the hoax
-The court was lied to about the hoax
-The media was in on the hoax”

Griff

See Joe’s first post.
I just read the heavily redacted document.
it confirms what Joe said above.
It has the links between candidate 2 (Clinton) and steel laid out.
There is also the issue that Carter was already suspected to be a Russian operative in 2014 long before Steel amassed his dosser.
I would not want it released sans redaction if I were you. If the FBI says it had other independent evidence in a request for surveillance of an individual it is highly likely they did .

Joe Bloggs

trump is trying to blame Obama because his entire political playbook has come from decades of watching Fox News. Obama is the universal fall guy for the Republican Party, but Obama didn’t invent the Russia scandal. The trump campaign wasn’t told about it because they were the target of the investigation.

MaureenW

Joe, you should read less trash, Obama knew about the Russian interference and under his watch an order given not to investigate it. As Gezza says, wait and see what the outcome is instead of making it up as you go.

Blazer

‘Citibank fined for anti-money laundering deficiencies
First Published 5th January 2018
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency assesses 70 million USD civil money penalty against Citibank
FineBanksRegulation
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently assessed a 70 million USD civil money penalty against Citibank for failing to comply with the agency’s 2012 consent order related to Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML) deficiencies.

In its 2012 order, the OCC cited the bank for BSA violations, deficiencies in its compliance program, failing to file suspicious activity reports, and weaknesses in controls related to correspondent banking. In assessing this civil money penalty, the agency found that the bank has not achieved compliance with the OCC’s 2012 order, failing to complete corrective actions to address BSA/AML compliance issues as required by the order.

The bank paid the assessed penalty to the US Treasury.’

Blazer

Bank of America…
‘By STEPHEN GANDEL June 24, 2014
Hundreds of companies have taken out life insurance policies that will pay them tens of billions of dollars when their employees die. Bank of America stands to make $20 billion alone from the demise of its workers.

And the really creepy thing: The policies tend to be whole life, and companies hang out to them long after their employees stop working for them. That means Bank of America (BAC, +1.52%) and others stand to collect money not just from the death of their current employees, but from their ex-staffers as well.’